


A simple mistake

by E17Ghora



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Reminiscing, Slight Canon Divergence, Spoilers Episode 105, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E17Ghora/pseuds/E17Ghora
Summary: Caleb casts Disintegrate against Vokodo. It gets reflected. The results are unexpected.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	A simple mistake

Caleb just wanted it to stop.

That was one of the most stressful fights of his life, but surprisingly it was not the worst: aside from Beau, who was being burned by the extreme heat the whole body of Vokodo irradiated, they were doing well. The water was unbearably hot, but once the creature would be gone they would have been fine. The Mighty Nein were giving all their best shots to a terrified animal who seemed to be barely able to defend himself. They were killing him. So he gave his contribution. A simple Disintegrate.

He cast the green ray, sure that it would have done the trick. So it seemed for a moment. Instead, the ray started to turn around Vokodo, and Caleb's heart dropped. Vokodo being tired or scared was not enough to stop his spell reflecting ability. It was happening.

Caleb saw a green flash coming towards him. He raised his hands, as it could have done something to prevent what was going to happen. He felt pain in his chest and he saw a red mist lift. He heard someone scream. He realized in a panic that he was not able to breathe anymore. His mind could only process pain before he saw something from beyond the Material Plane. And then everything became black.

At first, Caleb felt like he was floating. He never thought to ask one of his fallen companions how it felt like to be dead, even though they were not unfamiliar with the experience. He just knew that Caduceus had a vision from the Wildmother when it happened to him, then nothing more. Caleb never asked Veth because he knew how painful would have been for her to talk about that. And Fjord... his brain refused to think about him dead on that ship, suddenly killed by a past they thought gone and forgotten. _That could be you in a while_ , a selfish voice in the back of his brain suggested to him back then. He was getting closer to the Cerberus Assembly, and they knew who he was and what he was supposed to be. The mission Vess DeRogna was interested to assign them could have been a trap set to kill him and all his allies to keep secret all the evil deeds they committed in order to keep their power. But the Mighty Nein are strong, and their last fights were proving it. Caleb hoped that his death would have kept his friends safe from whatever plan the Assembly had for him.

Then, weirdly, Caleb started to hear whispers around him. Whispers that eventually evolved into voices.

"... it was more serious of what should have been because it was a fucking Disintegrate, but at least he is alive."

He opened his eyes, unable to think that theoretically he should not have them anymore. He saw a mostly reddish mist float around him, partially hiding the sight of something dark... dark rocks and corals? Then he noticed Caduceus and Jester looking upon him, smiling.

"Guys, he is waking up," the blue tiefling said with palpable relief.

His confused mind froze in horror. What were Jester and Caduceus doing on the other side? What were they doing to Hell? He moved, and he barely noticed that by doing so he freed himself from Jester's hug. " _Was ist los?_ "

"It's okay, Caleb. You lost some blood, but we healed the wound. You are going to be fine," the firbolg assured him.

It took him a couple of seconds to find his ability to speak common again. "You don't lose blood from a Disintegrate. It pulverizes you," Caleb elaborates, his mind racing. "I should be dead."

"It seems like you had a little help," Beau pointed at his hand. He raised it and he saw the golden ring whose green gems were shaped to create the design of a flying bird. A Ring of Evasion.

"Thanks to the ring's magic the Disintegrate didn't hit in a point that would have instantly killed you. But you were still hit in the chest and you lost a shit ton of blood, enough to cause you to pass out," the Expositor kept talking. Her expression was harsh. "You scared us all to death with your last stunt. What the hell, Caleb? You could have died! You would have died if you didn't have that ring!"

Caleb was barely able to hear what she was saying. He was barely able to process the fact that he was still alive despite the thumping beat he could hear in his ears. "Where is Veth?"

Beau looked exasperated, but Vilya replied to him. "She is scavenging the treasure with Yasha. They already found most of your offerings."

He could not see her or Yasha, but he could see Fjord's figure stick out from a few feet below. He was paying attention to something that was happening below. The explanation made sense. "Is anyone hurt?"

"Vokodo tried to attack Jester after that he ricocheted the Disintegrate back at you, but me and Yasha managed to subdue him before he could hurt her or anyone else."

Caleb's eyes flew to the blue tiefling. She looked rough, but she was smiling. "I'm okay. We all are. Caduceus is healing us while we talk." He could feel that the water was still boiling hot. "We were waiting for Veth and Yasha to take the important stuff and you to wake up to leave."

He could hear Fjord scream something and Veth's voice replying back. She was probably being informed that he was awake. It was true. They won, they had the loot, and in spite of his miscalculation, he was still alive. Caleb could feel himself breathe with relief and he felt a small pang of pain from it.

"I'm sorry. I just wanted him gone."

"We all wanted him gone, but we didn't almost kill ourselves to do that," said Beau, leaving out an exasperated sigh. "Just don't do that again, okay?"

That had been a long day. The Mighty Nein were fast asleep, exhausted for the battle of that morning and the aftermath in Vo Village. The rest of the day had been exactly the kind of weird Caleb learned to expect from his friends. He witnessed to the weirdest mating dance ever between the two resident lesbians, he saw Sprinkles survive the ordeal ( _again_ ), he saw the weasel murder Octopus Frumpkin for trying to comfort him and Jester, he identified a good loot for his companions, he brought back Frumpkin as a cat, and he practiced with _his surprise_. It was almost done, and he could not feel more proud and excited.

Vilya kindly offered them her place to sleep for the night. Each one of them had a cushion and a hide to sleep, and the others were already sleeping after the tea Caduceus offered them all when they found out that the druid had a stove in her house. Caleb's eyes fell on Veth, who was fast asleep next to him. After she was done with the loot the halfling rushed to hug him and started to cry so loudly and desperately that almost looked like that she failed to realize that Caleb survived the hit. It took a while to calm her down, and even after that she refused to leave his side. Veth stared at his new scar for the rest of the day, as she was expecting it to suddenly expand to destroy the rest of his body.

The Disintegrate spell created a hole located barely an inch below his left collarbone. A couple of inches lower it would have pierced the heart, an inch to the right and it would have pierced the windpipe and possibly one of the main blood vessels. In either case, such a hit would have killed him instantly leaving no body to resurrect. Despite all the cures he received under the volcano it still hurt him and the cause was almost surely the nature of the wound itself: some of the tissues were gone and it would have taken some time before the damage was fully repaired even after all the healing magic it was used. Luckily there were no other demigods fights programmed for the time being.

"Here," Caleb gasped (and felt some pain from it) as Caduceus slipped behind his shoulders with a steaming hot cup of tea. "There was some water left and you seemed to have problems sleeping. It will help you to relax."

" _Danke._ Thank you," the wizard whispered, drinking a bit of liquid. It helped a bit with the knot in his stomach. "I thought you were sleeping."

"And I thought you needed someone to talk so you don't have nightmares about what happened today," the firbolg said like it was something obvious. "Today was a lot."

"It was a lot," Caleb agreed, staring at his own reflection in the cup.

"I don't blame you for what happened, and neither do the others. Everybody makes mistakes from time to time. What matters is to learn from them."

"I was lucky to have the ring. And you were lucky that he picked me up for that attack. I'm really glad he did. I... I don't know what I would have done if any one of you had been hit by that spell instead of me."

What ifs. They haunted his adult life from the day that cleric put his fractured mind back together. For a moment he thought about what would have happened if he did not have that ring; he wondered what would have happened if Vokodo had picked up someone else, and he needed to drink some tea to untie the stomach knot at the thought of someone else dying in the party; and he thought about how he would have felt if his calculations were correct and Vokodo would have been hit by the Disintegrate.

The only difference with the last scenario would have been that Caleb would have not thought about it as much as he was doing.

"It was scary. You were pierced and there was too much blood. Before we reached you, we were sure you were gone," Caduceus shook his head. "I never saw the others so scared. I was scared too, to be honest. We will all end up underground one day, but I really hope that when that moment will come you guys will be old, gray, and surrounded by the people you love. No one deserves this more than you."

"I don't," he admitted with a whisper. Caduceus stared at him, but Caleb pretended he did not notice. He was just too tired.

"Most of the people don't even notice they grew up. Believe me, the man I met back at the Blooming Grove and the man before me right now might look similar, but they are not the same," the firbolg replied. "I have the feeling that if you were still that man you would not even try to have this conversation right now."

He was right. Caleb felt a familiar sting in his eyes, and he smothered it with the tea. He thought about a conversation they had a long time ago, about people being flowers planted by the gods who were waiting for them to bloom into something beautiful. He thought about the greatest mistake of his life and he wondered what kind of flowers the gods were expecting him to bloom as if he kept making mistakes and destroy everything he touched. The others were sleeping. "I killed my mother and father."

It was barely a whisper. Caleb felt no movement from the firbolg next to him.

"Trent Ikithon, my teacher... he taught us to do anything for the Empire. Even murder. Even..." the weight of these actions made him sigh. "There was nothing more important of the Empire, not even family. He made me believe they were traitors. I believed him. I killed them. And I broke. That's why I stayed at the Sanatorium for eleven years. I didn't want him to find me after I escaped, that's why I tried to stay hidden until recently."

Caduceus was saying nothing, and Caleb did not know if he was grateful or terrified by that lack of reaction.

"Now it's no use to hide it anymore. A long time ago I made a mistake, and that mistake brought me here today. Soon I will face my past, and I know that you guys are the only reason why I can do this. I don't want other mistakes to happen. I don't want other children to destroy their own families. But I keep on doing wrong and I don't know if I am the right person to do this."

"Today you miscalculated, back then you were deceived into believing that your family was the enemy." Caduceus said slowly. "Today was a mistake. What happened back then was manipulation. It's completely different."

Caleb stared at the firbolg. His expression was neutral, but there was a spark of anger in his eyes.

"I'm starting to understand it. But the feeling that I could have done something different is still there."

"There was no way. That man, Trent Ikithon... what he did to you was horrible. He tried to break you and make a weapon out of you like he already did with many others. I'm just glad he failed."

Maybe Caduceus misunderstood what happened. "He broke me. My family died and I broke. I lost eleven years of my life because of him."

"And yet here you are, telling me that you want to stop him from doing this again," said Caduceus with a proud smile. "You couldn't become a weapon if you had a heart, so he tried to destroy it by making you kill your own family. But your heart refused to be destroyed, so your mind broke instead. You are here right now because you loved your family so much that you refused to let what was happening to you to continue. It was a choice you made a long time ago. The gods listened to the prayer you didn't know you said, and they are giving you the chance to set it right. This is happening now because the time has come. And I will be glad to be by your side when you will stop Ikithon from hurting more people."

Caleb was stunned. He did not know how to feel about it. "Caduceus, I don't know what to say..."

"There is no need to say anything, I am always ready to help a friend in need."

Caleb drank a long sip of tea to subdue the sting in his eyes. He did not expect this to be Caduceus's answer. He was ready to be blamed, insulted, or condemned, especially after the events of the fight. "I miss them every day."

"I know. I could read that pain from you from the very beginning. I never inquired because I was waiting for you to be ready to share," he patted his healthy shoulder in sympathy. "I'm glad you did. I'm sorry for your loss. But I'm even more sorry that you had to have a hand in it."

Caduceus waited for him to finish his tea so he could retrieve the cup as he left to go to sleep. Caleb started to cry in silence. That conversation went much more differently inside his head. He thought that his revelation would have been the final straw that would have convinced the firbolg that the Mighty Nein were not heroes with a greater purpose the gods set them in, that he would have left to never come back. Instead, he had nothing but nice words for him. Everybody seemed to have just nice words for him, yet he kept on feeling dirty on the inside. Maybe a bit less than before.

_You are here right now because you loved your family so much that you refused to let what was happening to you to continue. It was a choice you made a long time ago._

Was it really a choice or it was the umpteenth justification that Caduceus could find to pardon the darkest parts of their story? He did not know. Caleb wanted to stop Trent Ikithon and the Assembly for good, but that resolve was recent. Before he was just glad to learn more magic, become more powerful, and try to fix the past. He would have left them to continue their atrocities once that he would have got his parents back because what they were doing would have not been his problem anymore. But that was Bren, and Bren was young, careless, and cruel in his ignorance of how the world really worked. Bren was content to live for his nation to the point the rest was not important. Bren believed in black and white, with no gray in between. In his world personal motives and feelings were irrelevant. Years, or maybe even months ago, Bren would have laughed at the thought that something like the Mighty Nein could exist and that he would be proud to call them his family.

Life is strange and Caleb could not be happier to be the living, breathing proof of that.

With that thought in mind, Caleb grabbed his cushion and hide and lied down on one of the flower-scented carpets of Vilya's house. He stared at the ceiling for exactly two minutes and fifty-four seconds before he joined his friends in their sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Well... that's it. I don't even know why I wrote this. Maybe because I needed some light Caleb Widogast angst and a bit of Caduceus "living therapy" Clay to keep the mood high? Possible. Just to be clear, this is not a shipping fic, but if you want to read it as such you can. Love is love after all. Have a lovely rest of the day.


End file.
